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WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� A chief architect of Project 2025, Paul Dans, is launching a Republican primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, joining a crowded field that will test the loyalties of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement in next year’s midterm election.

Dans told The Associated Press the Trump administration’s federal workforce reductions and cuts to federal programs are what he had hoped for in drafting Project 2025. But he said there’s 鈥渕ore work to do,鈥� particularly in the Senate.

鈥淲hat we鈥檝e done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” Dans said in an AP interview. 鈥滻f you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate. That鈥檚 the headwaters of the swamp.”

Dans, who is set to formally announce his campaign at an event Wednesday in Charleston, said Graham has spent most of his career in Washington and 鈥渋t鈥檚 time to show him the door.鈥�

Challenging the long-serving Graham, who has routinely batted back contenders over the years, is something of a political long shot in what is fast becoming a crowded field ahead of the November 2026 midterm election that will determine control of Congress.

Trump early on gave his endorsement of Graham, a political confidant and regular golfing partner of the president, despite their on-again-off-again relationship. Graham, in announcing he would seek a fifth term in the Senate, also secured the state’s leading Republicans, Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster, to chair his 2026 run. He has amassed millions of dollars in his campaign account.

Other candidates, including Republican former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andr茅 Bauer, a wealthy developer, and Democratic challenger Dr. Annie Andrews, have announced their campaigns for the Senate seat in an early start to the election season, more than a year away.

Graham, in an appearance Sunday on NBC’s 鈥淢eet the Press,鈥� did not discuss his reelection campaign but fielded questions on topics including his push to release 鈥渁s much as you can鈥� from the case files on Jeffrey Epstein, something many of Trump’s supporters want the government to do.

Dans, an attorney who worked in the first Trump administration as White House liaison to the office of personnel management, said he expects to have support from Project 2025 allies, as well as the ranks of Trump’s supporters in the state who have publicly tired of Graham.

After Trump left the White House, Dans, now a father of four, went to work at the Heritage Foundation, often commuting on weekdays to Washington as he organized Project 2025. The nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint, with chapters written by leading conservative thinkers, calls for dismantling the federal government and downsizing the federal workforce, among other right-wing proposals for the next White House.

鈥淭o be clear, I believe that there is a 鈥榙eep state鈥� out there, and I鈥檓 the single one who stepped forward at the end of the first term of Trump and really started to drain the swamp,鈥� Dans said, noting he compiled much of the book from his kitchen table in Charleston.

Among the goals, he said, was to 鈥渄econstruct the administrative state,鈥� which he said is what the Trump administration has been doing, pointing in particular to former Trump adviser Elon Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency shuttering federal offices.

Dans and Heritage parted ways in July 2024 amid blowback over Project 2025. Democrats and their allies showcased the hard-right policy proposals 鈥� from mass firings to budget cuts 鈥� as a dire warning of what could come in a second Trump term.

Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, and his campaign insisted it had nothing to do with his own “Agenda 47.”

Dans is launching his campaign with a prayer breakfast followed by a kick-off event at a historic venue in Charleston.

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Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at .